The Impact Of Customer Engagement Behaviors And Majority/Minority Information On The Use Of Online Reviews

While the use of consumer-to-consumer (c2c) online review information by consumers has been well-established, little research has investigated how online reviews impact consumers’ decision-making. Combining a customer engagement perspective (defined as time-on-task via eye-tracking) with the source-context-elaboration model, we propose that customer engagement behaviors along with majority and minority information differentially impact decision-making. Utilizing a mixed-methods approach (eye-tracking and experimental design), we test the extent to which majority (overall summary ratings) and minority (qualitative comments contrary to the overall ratings) information impact satisfaction with a decision and when minority information begins to become predominant. As expected, our results show that majority influence plays an important role; however, under increasing customer engagement with the minority feedback, the impact of the majority information drops precipitously.